Portable devices, such as digital audio and/or video players, cell phones, cameras, camcorders, or any other suitable portable devices, have limited battery capacity. In the case of a wireless cell phone device, the device can also operate in environments with differing network signal strengths. When the capacity of a battery drops below a threshold, known portable devices can operate in a low battery condition and reduce power consumption such as by, for example, dimming displays. In addition, low battery power modes can result in the shutting down of certain features of the device at varying levels of operation. For example, integrated circuits are known to go into low power states when a battery level has reached a low battery threshold level. Clock frequencies to certain functional blocks within the integrated circuit or the entire integrated circuit may be put in a low power mode. This may be carried out, for example, by varying clock frequencies to various circuits and lowering supply voltages to various internal circuits to an integrated circuit, such as an application specific integrated circuit, general purpose processor, baseband processor or any other circuit as desired. However, users are typically most concerned with the amount of play time of a digital audio or video playing device or the talk time remaining of a cell phone for the ability to use the portable device for at least an emergency call. However, in areas with low network signal strength, it may take more units of battery capacity per unit of talk time to provide suitable communication levels. Accordingly, having functional blocks or circuits “power down” in a low battery level condition may be too late when the wireless telephone is in a low signal strength environment since there may not be enough battery capacity to transmit at a high enough level with a base station or other wireless device.
In addition, portable devices are known that have many different software applications and features, such as the ability to play games, play digital media, have cameras, camcorder functionality, email applications, voice communication capabilities, and other features. However, each feature can consume differing amounts of power and may have a different metric that is important for the given application or feature. For example, when playing a game on a portable device, the amount of time to play the game may be an important metric to a user and for digital audio playing device, the amount of time that a song(s) can be listened to may be an important metric, the amount of talk time may be important for a voice communication feature in a cell phone and the number or size of emails that can be received may be relevant for an email feature. Known devices may allow a user to set a threshold of remaining battery capacity so that when the battery capacity reaches the minimum level set, certain power reduction operations take place in an effort to save battery power. However, some users may be more concerned with the available features and less concerned with the battery condition.
Therefore, a need exists for an improved power management operation in portable devices and/or portable wireless devices.